Support operations review

Why our support queue is slow

Last quarter's numbers point at three things: how much volume we handle, what that volume is made of, and when we are staffed to answer it.

4,120 tickets 9h 40m median first reply 3.4 / 5 satisfaction
1 / 6
The picture in five numbers

Where the queue stands today

4,120
tickets received last quarter
9h 40m
median time to first reply
38%
of tickets are password resets
2 vs 6
agents on a weekend day vs a weekday
3.4 / 5
customer satisfaction score
Volume, mix and cover
all pull the same way.
Each one on its own is survivable. Together they set the wait.
2 / 6
Diagnosis 1 — ticket mix

Nearly four in ten tickets are password resets

  • 38% of tickets are password resets. That is the single largest identified category in the queue.
  • Every reset takes a slot in the same first-reply line as billing problems, outages and account escalations.
  • Resets are also the most repetitive work we do — the kind of request least dependent on agent judgement.
Out of 4,120 tickets last quarter, 38% were password resets. Anything a customer could resolve themselves is currently competing for the same human attention as the problems that genuinely need an agent.
3 / 6
Diagnosis 2 — coverage

Weekend cover is a third of weekday cover

  • 6 agents on a weekday, 2 on a weekend day. Tickets do not drop by two thirds on Saturday.
  • A thin weekend shift means work carries over rather than clearing, so Monday starts behind.
  • A 9h 40m median first reply is what a queue looks like when arrivals and cover are out of step.
Median first reply is 9h 40m — for half of customers, longer than that. At 3.4 / 5, satisfaction is telling us the same story the wait time is.
4 / 6
Chart

The two gaps, side by side

Agents on shift per day
Weekday
6 agents
Weekend day
2 agents
Composition of 4,120 tickets last quarter
Password resets
38%
Everything else
62%

Bars are drawn directly from the figures above: 2 of 6 agents on weekends, and 38% of 4,120 tickets being password resets. “Everything else” is the remainder of the same total.

5 / 6
Recommendations

Four moves, in priority order

1

Make password resets self-service

It is the largest known category at 38%. Removing it from the human queue is the highest-leverage change available to us.

2

Rebalance weekend cover

Move cover closer to weekday levels rather than holding at 2 against 6, so weekend arrivals clear instead of rolling into Monday.

3

Triage on first touch

Split routine requests from ones needing investigation, so a 9h 40m median is not applied evenly to both.

4

Track first reply against satisfaction

Report median first reply and the 3.4 / 5 score together each month, so we can see whether these changes actually move the customer experience.

All figures on these slides come from last quarter's support data as supplied: 4,120 tickets, 9h 40m median first reply, 38% password resets, 2 weekend vs 6 weekday agents, 3.4 / 5 satisfaction. No other numbers have been estimated or added.

6 / 6